by Taylor Leigh
Then there was her growing attraction to Marus—which she still couldn’t quite explain. And, of course, Darius, who at this point was starting to feel like nothing more than an afterthought.
It was all a mess.
Gradually, the bike began to slow and Marus swung onto a narrow, muddy road. Up ahead, the trees ended abruptly. Beyond that, Sam could only see clouds. He at last pulled the bike over to the side of the road and cut the engine.
‘Here we are.’
Sam dropped off. ‘Where would that be?’ She unbuckled her helmet.
‘Guardian’s Gaze. Highest point on Red Wolf Mountain. Best view you’ll get. You can even see the ocean…on clear days, at least.’
Sam picked her way across the wet, muddy ground towards the edge. Before her, the ground dropped dramatically into a rocky, pine-strewn slope. Beyond that was a sea of green trees, broken here and there by Druid cities. Further away, foggy in the distance, was Miol Mor and the flat, black blotch of Elk Lake.
Cautiously, Sam hopped to a huge boulder jutting out over the ledge. Marus landed next to her.
‘Mind your step. Tollin would never forgive me.’
Sam pursed her lips and turned round in a small circle, scanning for the one thing she needed to see. At last, she spotted it: the Myrmidon headquarters.
Her jaw clenched and Marus glanced over at her. Sam realised her expression must have mirrored what her thoughts were much clearer than she’d intended.
‘You sure you’re all right?’ he asked cautiously.
Sam pressed her lips together tightly and nodded. ‘Yeah, I’m fine.’
Marus smiled hesitantly, looking surprisingly understanding. Still, she didn’t want him to say anything. He wasn’t going to help, so what good did it do to remark on it all?
Sam stared down at the compound, unable to look away. It was so nondescript, just a great, flat roof over a dun coloured, square building. Over all, the headquarters looked just like a logging warehouse would. There were even rows of logs stacked in huge piles inside the fenced area.
The only strange thing was the large glass dome that sat behind it, reminding her of an illuminated, honeycombed toadstool. The dome pulsed with a steady bluish light, almost as if it had a life of its own.
It was this she couldn’t take her eyes from.
It was the generator.
She didn’t see any lines connecting it to the building. Sam assumed they must be buried. Supposedly, that thing would be responsible for maintaining a connection between the Realms.
‘Have you ever seen anything like that before?’ she asked Marus. Tollin had said it wasn’t of this Realm. Perhaps Marus knew more about it than he had, as unlikely as that was.
He studied it for a moment. ‘Not like anything on this world, that’s for sure.’
Sam scowled. ‘Well, then how’d they build it?’
Marus shook his head. ‘I don’t know. If they got hold of plans for that chair of theirs, maybe Andrew had plans for that, too.’
Sam made a face. ‘Tollin said the explosion from that thing if it went unstable would take out everything to Flotsen.’
Marus winced. ‘Wouldn’t be surprised.’
Sam sighed. ‘So I don’t suppose you could just fly over it and drop a big rock on it, then?’
Marus nudged her good-humouredly. ‘Still plotting their downfall?’
Sam glowered at him. ‘It’s not a joke, Marus. Can’t you see what they’re trying to do?’
Marus nodded. ‘Yeah, I do, and it’s bad, but you can’t just go jumping into some half-arse attempt to save him! That’s what got him captured in the first place.’
Sam nodded. ‘I know, but they’re hurting him, Marus.’ She turned to face him. ‘And if they can’t find a use for him then they’re going to kill him.’
Marus grabbed her hand with the ring on it and held it up so they could both see it. ‘And you’re just going to cause him even more problems if you get caught trying something stupid. They’ll kill you, which won’t make Tollin happy, and then use him up with the two stones on the anniversary.’
Sam huffed. ‘I know.’
‘They’ll keep Tollin alive. They need him. I don’t know why he hasn’t jumped out of there yet, but he must have a reason. He’ll be back, don’t worry. He always manages.’
Sam studied him. She wanted to tell him Tollin couldn’t, but exposing the extent of their mental conversation felt too personal. ‘But maybe he can’t. Maybe he always manages escaping tough situations because he always has someone there to help him. Maybe that someone is me.’
Marus swore. ‘You’ve fallen hard.’
Sam glared. ‘I have not!’
Marus gave her a wry grin. ‘Ah, you may not realise it yet, but you have. You’re certainly not the first. I’ll never understand it, but he’s got a gift, making people fall for him as fast as they do.’
Sam made a face. Was it that obvious? Surely not. She was just worried about him, nothing more! ‘Don’t be ridiculous. It’s nothing of the sort. It’s just this mental connection we’ve got. I simply can’t help but feel strongly for him—not in a romantic way—but he saved my life and I’m not just about to let him suffer because of that!’
Marus was still smiling in an aggravating, cheeky way that said all-too-well that he didn’t believe a word of it. Sam wasn’t so sure she did either.
She fought down her frustration. ‘So,’ she was desperate to change the subject away from her feelings about his brother. ‘What would happen if you did tamper with the generator? Would it explode?’
Marus was clearly reluctant to abandon the current line of conversation, but slowly scratched his head in thought. ‘Hard to say. I would hope there are safety measures installed to prevent a meltdown. But considering who we’re talking about? It could be a jumble of sparking wires for all I know.’
Sam doubted that. These people were careful. She’d seen the chair. If the generator was anything like that construction, it would be sophisticated.
Suddenly, there was a rumble, and Sam watched in fascination as the ground below her appeared to almost liquefy. The trees below her swayed and rocks shifted. The movement crawled up the slope and hit them. Sam went wobbling wildly as the boulder beneath her pitched precariously at the edge. Marus gript her tightly. He swore.
Sam managed to look back to the source just as the glass globe glowed a bright blue-white colour, shining like a light bulb. For the briefest of seconds, Sam thought she saw something twisting down from the sky into the dome; a translucent ribbon, grey and substantial, winding like some living thing, plugging itself into the shining vault. By the time it took Sam to blink, both the glowing light from the generator and the ribbon were gone.
Her hand was aching like mad. The stone was practically whining it was shining so bright.
‘D—did you see that?’ Sam gaped.
Marus scowled. ‘What?’
Sam tried to explain, voice wobbling like the ground just had.
Marus gave her a sharp look. ‘Do you still see it?’
Sam shook her head. ‘No,’ she stared at the generator, still humming away. ‘No. It’s gone. It must be inside of there or something.’
They both watched it a moment longer. To Sam’s disappointment, nothing happened.
‘See anything else?’ Marus asked.
Sam shook her head, disappointed. ‘No.’
The sky overhead rumbled, as if unhappy with whatever sick vein it had spat out. Sam felt a drop of water hit her face and slide down her cheek. Marus still had a grip her arm, his touch sending through Sam the same flare of heat she couldn’t control. ‘We should get back.’
Sam glanced up at him. The rain was starting to pick up to a steady drizzle. Still, she wanted to stay. Marus’s tug began a little more insistent. ‘If we don’t leave now we’re going to be soaked on the ride home.’
She cast one last look at the generator, giving it a hateful glower, then obediently, Sam turned from the view. H
er ring clenched tightly against her skin, practically shivering in anticipation.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Erikson stared at the shining screen in front of him, still hardly able to believe his eyes. The bio-results for their prisoner, the Traveller, were still captivating to him. It was, in an odd way, the best thing that had ever happened to him.
His nerves had been stretched thin over the past couple of years. Working on the chair project with a fast approaching—and very final—deadline had been madness. Added to that, trying to integrate their technology to that of the stolen O’Neill plans had been enough to push many over the edge.
He hadn’t thought it conceivable to complete it. But when they’d had their breakthrough and discovered the blank void, it had opened a window to a glorious, incredible new world of possibilities.
And then everything had changed.
Roth had been, understandably, all-too excited about the development with the void. He’d been the real driving force behind what tests should be run, what readouts to take, how to keep it open. Until he’d begun to expect more results than he was receiving.
A year ago, before the void had even opened, he’d wanted to begin human trials on the chair. His lackey, the Blaiden man, Ulvihund, had been tasked with finding volunteers. So far, as far as Erikson knew, the chair had claimed eighteen unwilling lives. Erikson made a point of never being there for those experiments. He hoped that would be enough to forgive himself.
It wasn’t, really.
As of late his enthusiasm was, to say the least, beginning to wane. Murder and law breaking wasn’t what had drawn him to the organisation. Beings like the Traveller had. And now Roth was here and something was definitely wrong with him. Something had changed in him…it was almost as if something was…controlling him. Some terrible thought inside of him. The idea made Erikson feel sick.
Still, looking over the information on the Traveller’s internals scans sent his heart racing in excitement. He felt like a child at a museum, discovering the wonders of the world for the first time. It was fantastic and no-one around him seemed to care!
‘It’s just so incredible!’ he said for the third time.
‘What is?’ a woman named Keesha asked, bored.
Erikson gestured to his screen, enraptured. ‘The readout on our friend, the Traveller! Everything about him is…completely alien! Look at this: denser bone structure, better eyesight, different heartbeat! His brain works at about ten times that of a human’s and we’re only just beginning to try to look into his DNA. Imagine what we could find!’ He gazed at the screen. ‘I cannot believe this is actually happening in my lifetime.’
The door hissed open and Roth walked in, beady eyes narrowing. ‘I don’t give a damn about his denser bones. I want you to find the Realm Jumping gene! If you can’t seem to tear your fascination away from his readouts I’ll have to find someone else.’
Erikson winced slightly. ‘I’m working on it, but you have to realise that that is an enormous task! We’re not even sure if it is a gene, and if it is, we won’t know how to replicate it! Like I said: this is a completely different being we’re looking at; his genes could be so completely different from ours in the sense that we can’t replicate—’
Erikson typed in a few things quickly on the keyboard. Two lines of coding popped up side-by-side. One side scrawled with human DNA—Erikson’s—and the other with the Traveller’s. Both were blatantly different. The Traveller’s didn’t even seem to bond to the same proteins. Just a glance at the rows of chromosomes and one with no knowledge of genetics would be able to spot it.
‘Roth, you have to be reasonable about this. His DNA does have some slight human traits here and there, but most of it is so alien I’m not even sure what to call it. It doesn’t even consist of the same molecules that ours has! It would be next to impossible to replicate. I’m still trying to sort it all out. It’s one big, confusing mess!’
Roth slammed his hand down on the keyboard. ‘I don’t need a lesson in genetics, Erikson. If I can understand it, I can replicate it.’
Erikson gaped at him. He was no longer making sense. ‘He’s a living being, dammit! I can’t just treat him like he’s a lab rat! Not only that, he’s the first—and probably only—alien being which we’ll ever have the chance of studying! We should be treating him with respect, trying to learn from him, not pretending he’s some unintelligent animal!’
Roth was practically seething with rage. ‘Do not be so sure of that, Erikson.’ He straightened, fixing his glasses, which had slid slightly askew. ‘Just,’ he swallowed, ‘get it done.’
Erikson turned back to his monitor, trembling. He didn’t want to ask what the consequences might be if he failed.
* * * * *
Sam made it to the top of the tower just as darkness was beginning to fall. By the time she had arrived to the polished surface of the observatory, she could hear her heart pounding in her ears.
She was admittedly frightened about what she was about to do, much more than she’d have liked.
Above her, though it was cloudy, the strange, glittering light was beginning to grow across the sky; almost waiting for her. She hadn’t really acknowledged it, but Sam knew now that was exactly why she’d picked this place. That light gave her the courage she needed.
What would happen once she had several cross Daemons to deal with was, of course, disconcerting. Admittedly, perhaps attempting this at the top of the tower was not exactly wise, considering the amount of harm the creatures had managed to inflict on her before. But, Tollin had assured her she was in control, and Sam was filled with a fiery determination to prove that theory right. Things were going to go her way tonight.
The air was cold and Sam was beginning to regret not wearing a coat over her pyjamas. She sighed and rubbed her arms self-consciously. Now what was she supposed to do? Sit down and meditate? Draw some sort of symbol on the ground and chant? How exactly was she supposed to contact them? Tollin hadn’t really given her any pointers on how to accomplish that. If there was some formula for it, she was completely in the dark.
She tilted her head up to the sky, as if the answer might be written there; it wasn’t of course. A few sparse stars shone through the thick clouds. However, much nearer, something beautiful was happening: The light from the sky had started to twist downwards towards her—just as it had done the last time she’d been here. Sam grinned. Could this possibly the same stuff that Tollin’s guide was made of? It did have a way of showing up when she wanted it.
Her skin glowed with it.
It began to hit the edges of the tower, like molten gold splashing in slow motion. There it hung in a thickening fog, circling her on all sides.
Sam felt her heart rate quickening. Something like hope began to stir excitedly in her. She was finding she liked the light, or perhaps Light. Sam supposed that this thing, whatever it was, was not just some inanimate substance. This glowing cloud was something alive; a benevolent entity. Perhaps, in a way, similar—and yet not—to the hungry thing in the void.
Sam turned round in a tight circle, finding a sense of command rising from some spot buried at the very centre of her. She held up her hand and stared at the ring, her spine going tight. ‘Right,’ she swallowed, ‘now or never.’
Her confidence must have been a more intimidating motivator than she’d thought. It was almost tangible how the presence inside of the ring went shrinking back, trying to find some small corner to hide in. The things inside of the ring must be afraid of her. Oh, that was good. Was this how the Traveller felt constantly?
‘Oi! Come on out of there, I want to talk to you!’ she snapped.
It tightened reluctantly.
Sam mentally put her foot down. She might as well be invincible, for she had more control now than she ever had. It was intoxicating. Consuming; in a good way. ‘I’m talking to you!’
Reluctantly, thickly, like tar, something seeped forward, eking out of the red stone to pool before her in a fat cloud
. That was all. No shape, no size, nothing but a veil of black that hung, tethered to the ring. Yet it grew, hulking, wafting off a primal sense of animalistic anger. Sam could almost smell this beast. And it terrified her.
It wasn’t a Daemon.
It was the thing from the void.
And though it was trapped, and very cross about it, it was incredibly powerful.
The light around her shimmered. A shudder of sorts, confirming her fear.
The cloud rolled, it began to shape. Black spines of wings and a bulky body arched over her. If it was frightened of her, it showed none of it now. ‘How right you are, child,’ it spoke as if it read her mind. ‘Funny, how when one is friends with the Traveller, one feels invincible. Ignorance is often the biggest flaw you creatures have. Especially your dear friend.’
Sam could feel her chest clamping up. Her legs wobbled. This thing was projecting the emotion on her in wave after wave. Her lungs didn’t appear to be working.
‘What are you?’ It was difficult to get the words out.
It used as much of the leash the ring would allow to stalk around her, moving like a predator. ‘Everything.’
Sam crossed her arms across her chest. ‘My, that’s not egotistical of you. Do all Daemons think so highly of themselves?’
The cloud let out a deep chuckle, which rattled Sam’s core. ‘We are not Daemons, child. You are just as stupid as the Traveller. You’ll never understand. We are the Darkness, ever growing, ever feeding, ever creeping into every Realm. We have expanded across dimensions and universes, devouring all in our path.’
Sam’s head was starting to pound. Not Daemons? The thing—the Darkness—was making her physically ill. She glowered at the creature. ‘Am I supposed to be impressed by wild claims?’
The Darkness moved suddenly to tower over her, shimmering in rage. ‘Being friends with the Traveller does not make you him! You are nothing but food. The second we are free, we’ll suck all life from you as slowly as possible and make him watch! You are still human, child! You are not the Traveller, and we do not fear him or his friends!’ A long tendril of Light shot forward like lightning and struck the creature, chastising it. The Darkness snarled and shrank back obediently, rumbling like thunder.